The Best Apps to Help with Towing
Technology, and especially mobile apps, are constantly evolving, with new options constantly popping up. Whether you’re traveling around Michigan for business or pleasure, you can make it easier by ensuring you have the right towing apps. Heading into 2023, consider adding these apps to make your journeys safer and more enjoyable.
Maps & Road Conditions
Waze - This continues to be one of the most popular navigating apps, available for both iOS and Android. Waze goes beyond simple navigation but offers you real-time traffic and backup reports so that you can find an alternate path when needed. You can also find fuel and gas prices, parking, and food.
Road Trippers - Sometimes you need a more robust planning tool than the simple point to point navigation of most navigation programs. Road Trippers allows you to program multiple waypoints, with up to five in the free version.
Towing Weight Management
GVWR - This is the perfect app when you’re shopping for a new tow vehicle or trailer. This allows you to explore various vehicle and trailer combinations to see what will provide the right capacity for your needs.
BetterWeigh - It’s challenging to know exactly how much weight you’ve added to your trailer unless you stop at a scale. By that point, it’s a little late to unload or readjust. BetterWeigh uses a simple device that plugs into your vehicle's OBDII port and offers tremendous insight into your load. Through the mobile app, you’ll get vehicle weight, vehicle and trailer weight, cargo or payload weight, tongue and pin weight, weight distribution, and trailer brake gain.
Fuel Apps
GasBuddy - Gas Buddy continues to be one of the leading apps for checking fuel prices near your location or a location you input.
Gas Guru - Put out by the YellowPages, this functions much like GasBuddy. The difference is that it pulls data from the Oil Price Information Service rather than from users.
Pilot Flying J and Love’s Connect - Flying J and Love’s are two of the largest chains of truck stops across the United States. Their apps allow you to find locations, participate in rewards programs, check gas prices, and even pay for fuel directly from your smartphone.
Traveling Weather
Highway Weather - Planning a long haul? The highway weather app allows you to see the weather along your entire route, check live weather and traffic cameras, and even get the best time to depart for ideal traveling weather.
Weather On The Way - Similar to Highway Weather, but also provides radar and a timeline with what the weather will be as you drive through different cities or areas.
Finances & Business
PayPal - This has become one of the most popular payment platforms, serving personal and small business needs. Many businesses also allow you to use PayPal to purchase goods and services.
Venmo - Venmo is another popular payment app that is primarily used to send and receive money between individuals. This is an easy app to help share the cost of fuel when on a road trip with friends.
Hurdlr - If you’re hauling a trailer for business, you’ll want to track your mileage and expenses. Hurdlr makes managing the finances of your small business easy, with automatic GPS tracking of your trips.
Everlance - Similar to Hurdlr, this automatically tracks trips and helps you track expenses. It also has a specific cost-per-mile tool to help with deductions and helps manage drivers for your business, including insurance, forms, and motor vehicle record checks.
Connectivity
Speedcheck - Check your WiFi speeds while you’re traveling so that you know what apps and services will work well. You can also use the WiFi finder to find networks in your area.
Opensignal - This another app to check your WiFi speed, but also the speed of your cellular data connection. Additionally, it has unique features to help you get the best signal possible when you stop. If you’re traveling and planning to camp along the way, it will help you determine the direction to the closest tower. This allows you to ensure you’re facing the correct way to maximize your signal. There’s also a map with the location of the closest cellular connections, which you can filter by provider and data connection type.
Make sure you have the right trailer for your adventures or to serve your customers. Visit one of the USA Trailer showrooms throughout Michigan to get expert advice and trailers you can trust to keep you moving.